Talk:Dragonspine Axe/@comment-190.219.177.133-20131003185117/@comment-45075715-20200220133532
>> For siege defenses however, i find my sarleon halberd to be better. I've always favored long reach weapons for my character as well under human control since I can keep a safe distance and not get hit back. But I find the AI tends to do better with even shorter reach but faster weapons even from a mount let alone siege clusterfucks. It's like the AI is really dumb about timing attacks, choosing targets, and keeping optimal distance for weapon arcs, so they seem to do better overall with faster weapons in the same way a beginner thrives at FPS using a machine gun over a sniper rifle, and maybe even short-medium reach on melee. But under human control, we can much better utilize slower weapons with greater reach, slower attack speed, etc. We can kite and do fancy stuff. AI can't. So I like very long weapons, often two-handers, for my human-controlled character if I'm going melee to keep my character out of reach of enemy weapons while I can reach them. I also favor bow or x-bow builds so a two-hander lets me carry a second quiver or set of bolts. But for AI, weapon speed might be the most important quality, and too much reach in the hands of the AI and especially in siege situations and they tend to use them very clumsily (ex: hitting near the hilt or near the tip of the weapon causing minimal damage). It's a totally different situation as to what the AI can use well and what a human player can use well. I was complaining about this with Arquebus in the hands of the AI. I often find players talking about what weapons are good without making the AI vs. human distinction. I think this is crucial to distinguish, since what is good for the AI is not necessarily good for a human and vice versa. The Arquebus could be a really good weapon in the hands of human players coordinating as a team. The front line can fire, then reload, while the second in line get in front of the ones reloading and fire another volley. This would allow a constant stream of fire preventing enemies from getting too close in spite of the super lengthy reload times. But the AI doesn't do that. Instead the AI tends to shoot all at once, often wasting bullets aiming at the same nearest target, and then they all reload at the same time leaving them exposed and vulnerable to be slaughtered. That makes the Arquebus one of the worst possible ranged weapons (I could even see a strong argument for throwing weapons to be better more often than not), not in the hands of human players, but in the hands of the AI. The AI doesn't do the right things to compensate for its long reloading times. Human players can in the same way human players can compensate very well for a weapon with long reach but slow speed rating, but the AI can't. I've found with melee when we're talking AI after making so many comparisons experimenting with my CKO sergeant/knight equipment that the seemingly best melee weapons are fast and medium in reach even in open battlefields on mounts. I tried endless comparisons of all sorts of melee weapons (long, short, medium, high damage, low damage, medium damage, blunt, piercing, cutting). I found weapon speed rating dominating here as arguably the most important stat provided we don't sacrifice too much damage for speed, and optimal reach to be somewhere in the medium area (not too short like below 60, not too long like well over 100). Idealistic weapons might be around 75 reach on average, as much speed rating as possible (more the merrier), and at least 30+ damage if cutting, maybe mid-late 20s acceptable if blunt or piercing but of course more damage the merrier as well but I find it acceptable to sacrifice more damage than might intuitively seem optimal if the troop has high prof/powerstrike in exchange for the fastest weapon speed rating possible within a certain damage threshold. Dragonspire Axe fits this category along with Nodlor Runesword, almost Strange Ebony Sabre (its reach is a tad long but not too much more than what might be optimal and it is super fast), Dragon's Tooth, D'Shar Short Sabre, Knight War Axe (27p), Sapphire Rune Axe (and I would argue the AI uses it better than Ruby in spite of less cutting damage over more piercing due to its epic 130 speed rating), etc, . I used to think bonus against shields and being able to crush through blocks was really desirable and it is very useful in human hands, but in AI-controlled hands, I find it much more important that they can just attack super fast. They'll connect behind shields and weapon parries well enough at the right moments if they attack super fast. If they attack slowly, they'll typically be the ones getting cut down by enemies that attack faster. I would even argue that more often than not, the AI uses one-handed weapons better than two-handed even without equipping shield on top (as in they will kill much faster and do better when surrounded and even on mounts). The shield is just icing on the cake, but the one-handed weapons more often fit these idealistic speed rating and reach categories to let them attack super fast and not clumsily with minimal damage. The main exception for two-handers, of course, is anti-cav foot soldiers -- there long polearms might have the edge. I even switched my CKO mounted units from a two-hander to one-hander for a while where they couldn't use shield for a while since I had to wait a bit longer for the shield upgrade, but they suddenly started killing so much faster and surviving so much better (even using one-hander with no shield) even though their one-hander did much less damage and had much less reach -- the only thing going for it was faster speed and maybe being in a sweet spot as far as not having too much reach but not having too little. I am not 100% sure why the AI seems to benefit so much from sub-optimal weapons in human hands -- all I notice is that they are killing much, much faster and taking fewer casualties with such melee weapons equipped (I'm talking zero casualties or close even when significantly outnumbered and outclassed, like taking zero casualties when outnumbered by Noldor). One possibility is that clusterfucks aren't limited to siege scenarios when we're talking AI in open battlefields. The AI will often do something incredibly dumb like gallop into a tree or down the center of a group of infantry and get stuck. Then they're in the middle of a clusterfuck. A medium reach weapon with very fast attack speed might help them here to very quickly cut their way out of the clusterfuck and resume galloping and survive on top of racking up a good number of kills being surrounded, wheras those with slower and/or longest-reaching weapons might fail to cut their way out and get knocked out or lose their mount and then get knocked out in the process.